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Obituaries

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For a big guy, David Gonzalez of Henryville "can be a little dramatic when he goes away," his wife, Rosalia, said.

As expected, before he boarded JetBlue Flight 191 at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on Tuesday for a business trip to Las Vegas, Gonzalez sent his wife the inevitable text message: "Take care of the family if something happens to me."

"He doesn't care for flying," Rosalia Gonzalez said Thursday of her husband, a security professional with a 6 foot 4 inch, 325-pound frame.

She was a little reticent about what her husband told her a few hours later after an emergency landing in Texas: he had subdued the plane's manic captain while a co-pilot made an emergency landing.

"You're never going to believe what happened," he said.

"I said, 'You're being dramatic again,' " she said.

He wasn't.

The flight

It was going to be a long flight, especially for a man of his stature, so he booked two seats in the second row of the plane where he could enjoy the added leg room, Gonzalez, 50, said.

But a couple of hours into the flight, comfort became the least of his concerns.

The plane's captain, Clayton Osbon, barrelled out of the cockpit, Gonzalez recalled Thursday, and started banging on an occupied restroom door.

As a flight attendant tried to calm the captain, a third pilot slipped into the cockpit, joined a co-pilot who took over the flight and altered the cockpit door's security code to prevent Osbon from getting back in, Gonzalez said.

Suddenly, Osbon was back at the front of the plane, kicking the cockpit door and begging to be let inside.

By then, Gonzalez and his fellow passengers had begun to worry. He wondered if Osbon had discovered some kind of explosive on the plane.

"But it was nothing. It was just he was losing it, and he wanted to crash this plane," Gonzalez said.

The plane's flight attendants tried to get control of him, but the 6 foot 2 inch tall, 245-pound pilot pushed them aside, Gonzalez said.

"They couldn't contain him. He was a strong guy," he said.

That's when Gonzalez knew he had to step in.

As he approached the tussle between Osbon and the attendants, Gonzalez said he saw one of the women mouthing to him, asking for his help, he said.

"What's your problem, man?" Gonzalez asked the frantic pilot.

"You better start praying right now," Gonzalez said Osbon replied.

"I pray every morning," Gonzalez told him.

"'What about Iraq and Iran?'" Osbon asked Gonzalez.

"I said, 'You want to see Iraq and Iran?'" Gonzalez recalled. "That's when I took him into a chokehold."

As the two men struggled, Gonzalez felt Osbon lift his chin.

"The minute he picked up his chin, it was all over," Gonzalez said.

He put all his might into the hold until the pilot began to lose consciousness.

"Once he passed out, I let him go. We laid him on the floor," he said.

By then, the passengers were in a frenzy and, with Osbon seemingly under control, Gonzalez did what he could to "avoid the panic," he said.

"I just started telling people, 'We've got it under control. Relax,'" he said.

As Osbon started to come to, Gonzalez and the others dealing with him offered him water and waited until the plane touched down in Amarillo, Texas.

FBI agents swarmed the plane once it was on the ground, taking Osbon into custody, Gonzalez said.

"(Osbon) woke up and goes, 'We did it. We did it,'" Gonzalez said. "But then he passed out again, so they just took him out."

Once the passengers made their way off the plane, investigators started asking questions and piecing the story together, Gonzalez said.

When they were done, all the passengers' eyes were on Gonzalez.

"'Can I take a picture with you?' 'Can I buy you a drink?' 'I never thought I was going to see my family again,'" Gonzalez recalled the passengers saying.

Gonzalez was worried about their families, too, he said, his concern for the other passengers and their loved ones even blotting out any concerns about his own safety and family.

"I didn't even think about mine, because I was just concerned about their safety at that time," he said. "It hurt a lot to see those people, the panic in their faces, to think about the flashes that they were seeing."

The story

After she hung up with her husband Tuesday morning, Rosalia Gonzalez was on the phone with her friends, sounding about as "dramatic" as Gonzalez.

"You won't believe what my husband just told me," she began.

Before long, there was a YouTube video of the incident, followed by scores of TV news segments affirming the story she was telling.

And then the phone started ringing.

Newspapers across Pennsylvania, media outlets across the country, a New York Post reporter knocking on her door - everyone wanted to hear her husband's story.

"I've gotten so many calls, and I'm trying to call people back as I go down the list," she said.

For Gonzalez, who made his way to Las Vegas for the trade show he was headed to in the first place, his sudden fame has consumed almost everything else.

"It's been nonstop," he said.

A morning interview with "Good Morning America," a call from Dr. Phil's agent - everyone wants to hear his story, he said.

Thursday finally brought the call he had been waiting for since the whole ordeal settled down - from Jet Blue.

The airline offered him a free round-trip flight, Gonzalez said, but what he wants is much simpler.

"I would rather have a handshake from the owner of Jet Blue for saving his plane," Gonzalez said. "Let's have a sit-down. Let's have cup of coffee. Let's shake hands. â¦ I was just disappointed. They kind of brushed this off."

As for Rosalia Gonzalez, she and the couple's five children just want Gonzalez back in Henryville, where he's due this afternoon.

"He's flying back, unfortunately," Rosalia Gonzalez said.

domalley@timesshamrock.com

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